There are few authors I'd trust to do a modern rewrite of my favorite Dickens novel, David Copperfield, but if it's going to be done Barbara Kingsolver is the one to do it. In this wonderful revision to the classic story, Kingsolver transplants Victorian London to modern day Appalachia, and it is astonishing just how well it works. Where Dickens had child labor and worker exploitation as his story engines, Kingsolver has the opioid crisis and the American medical system. Where Dickens had alcoholism and sex slavery, Kingsolver has, well, alcoholism and sex slavery. Some things don't require updating.

'Demon' (Damon), our narrator, is 100% as engaging and entertaining a voice as the original David, and Kingsolver infuses his narration with a lilt and tenor that both effectively evokes the landscape of Appalachian society and makes it pretty darn beautiful to read, too. All our favorite characters are there, translated. I won't go into detail on the specifics, because much of the joy of reading the book is slowly working out who is who, and casting your mind back to the original to speculate on how exactly each element might play out in this new version. If I have one complaint, or rather, if there is one thing that made this book harder to read than the original, it is that Kingsolver gives Damon much less respite than Dickens. In the first half of the book as he slogged through his miserable childhood, I comforted myself with the success and joys that lay ahead of him. Let's just say that, while it was in fact probably harder to transcend social classes in Victorian England that it is to do in modern America, this book doesn't seem to think so. That's not to say this novel lacks hope or joy -- there is much of that here -- but the suffering is profound and extended, and much as I wanted it to be otherwise, it is necessary for this novel to ring true.

Barbara Kingsolver has written my standout favourite book of this year with this contemporary retelling of Charles Dicken's David Copperfield, a razor sharp indictment of modern America, its history, its divisions and inequalities, mirroring the heartbreaking institutional poverty and the shameful tragic repercussions on the abandoned children of Victorian England. Those familiar with David Copperfield will recognise many of the characters here, such as U-haul Pyles (Uriah Heep), and Murrell Stone (Edward Murdstone). It is set in Lee County, in the Applachian mountains of Virginia, rural people sneered and ridiculed as red necks and hillbillies, with its history of land grabs, old mining towns where it was no accident that there are no prospects, a recruitment goldmine for the army, and an ideal target for evil corporates to flood with prescription pill pushing that precipitated a national opoid crisis.

It is here that Demon Copperhead is born in a trailer to an addict mother, whose bad choices lead her to marrying a brutally violent and controlling Stone, a trigger for Demon's downward spiral that the Peggot's are unable to help him with as he finds himself trapped in a foster care system run by companies who have little interest in their 'product'. He finds himself a slave boy on a farm not fit for living in, starved, thrashed, kept from school, poisoned by tobacco plants, and attending pharm parties, his only solace his super hero and villains cartoon drawings. The deceitful McCobbs are in desperate need of foster money cash and expect him to earn a living, Demon works amidst the trash, he barely speaks at school, ostracised, receiving the unrelentingly clear message that he is worthless. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, his response is to still be alive. So when circumstances improve, his unresolved past traumas and poor self esteem leave him ill equipped to cope as he finds himself caught in a damaging opoid addiction when he suffers a serious knee injury leaving him in constant pain. Will he manage to survive?

Demon proves to be remarkably resilient in the face of the challenges that beset his life, the crushing losses, hunger, neglect, addiction and despair. There are amazingly supportive women in his life, June's never ending capacity to care, his grandmother, Betsy, the bright and talented Angus, his art teacher Ms Annie, and Lyra, the librarian who helps him put together his website as he sets out to write a history of the 200 year war in which rural mountain people have tried to keep their body and souls together. There is an all too understandable rage at the state of America today, at the history that has led to the present in this retelling, in the novel Kingsolver has Demon read Dickens in his English class, with him noting that Dickens totally gets how kids get screwed over and no-one cares. This is a superb, illuminating, hopeful and thought provoking read that I think will appeal to a wide range of readers, including fans of the author. I can also see this book introducing Dickens to a new generation of readers! Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Oh my god, this book. Blazingly, righteously angry but told with so much warmth and charm, this is the story of a boy born with the worst of luck, digging in his heels and deciding to survive. A breathtaking look at poverty, the social security system in the US, the opioid crisis and the power of community. One of the best books I’ve read all year.

Demon Copperhead, born in the caul to a dead father and an addicted teenage mother, grows up in a holler with his best friend Maggot (a gay Goth-in-training), enjoys a brief moment in the sun on the high school football team and slides into a morass of drugs and squalor with his childlike first love Dori. I confess I haven't read David Copperfield, but started to recognise the names, some of which are exactly the same (Mr. Dick), some close to the originals (Betsey Trotwood/Betsy Woodall) and some of which are wild but pleasing (Steerforth/Sterling Ford/Fast Forward, and Uriah Heep/U-Haul Pyles). Can Demon be saved by his beloved sort-of-aunt June and almost-sister Angus? You'll be crossing everything.

Every now and then I read a book that makes everything else I read recently look insubstantial. Many novels at the moment read like script treatments (with a few exceptions, such as Akwaeke Emezi). This, however, is unashamedly meaty, drawing from its Victorian source material with some wild contemporary twists. Demon Copperhead is a big, beautiful, angry book that also happens to be Kingsolver's best work since The Poisonwood Bible.

I loved this book. It took me a couple of chapters to mesh with the writing style but once I did. I was hooked.

Full disclosure I’ve never read David Copperfield and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that this was a retelling.

If you like character driven story telling this is the book for you.